How to Master NewsNow

NewsNow is a news aggregator with a massively popular football section. Millions of football fans visit the NewsNow football page (or one of the various team-specific sub-pages) to see the stream of headlines and click on the ones they find interesting. This presents a huge opportunity for you to attract readers to your article. But remember they only see the headline, so that’s your only chance to grab the attention of potential readers.

Some tips for having your articles do well on NewsNow:

Titles are EVERYTHING. See the type of headlines / post titles that do well (there’s a “Top Stories” box in the bottom right corner showing the most clicked headlines in the last 24 hours). Usually there’s a lot of hype and trash, but you’ll always find articles that do well because they offer something valuable to the readers. Go for value, don’t go for hype.

Timing matters a lot on NewsNow – for popular feeds (Arsenal, United, Pool), mid-morning UK time (10am-12am) and late afternoon (3pm-5pm) work best, but for NewsNow categories that don’t have many articles (less popular clubs), early morning or late night works just as well. The idea is to maximise exposure so you can get on the popular list for that club’s feed.

CAPS in certain parts of the story can attract attention, but do that only if it’s that sensational (or breaking news).

Discussion topics are always a crowd favourite, especially if you get on top of an issue before others.

Avoid rush hour. The rush of posts early morning and right after matches can drown your good posts out. Observe NewsNow and don’t make the mistake of posting at a time where your work will get drowned. Posting right after matches is especially a tricky one, although with a good headline and especially if you post late evening (UK time) an hour or so after the game, it can be good.

Beyond NewsNow. Despite the benefits NewsNow brings, it’s useless if you don’t leverage it properly. NN is an excellent way to build a readership, but you also need to leverage that readership to help your site get traffic from other sources. Target bloggers / forum editors that read NewNow by writing interesting and funny stuff and you’ll get links and traffic from other sources as well.